News

Key suppliers celebrate Bombardier CSeries first flight

From:
CompositesWorld
Posted on:
9/23/2013

Toho Tenax and Virtek, suppliers to the CSeries, congratulate the OEM on the successful first flight.

On Monday Sept. 16, Bombardier Aerospace celebrated the successful first flight of its CSeries aircraft. The ACS100 jetliner achieved a major milestone in the company’s highly anticipated development program that will provide operators with an all-new family of aircraft specifically designed for the 100-to 149-seat market segment. Supplier Teijin Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan) is proud that its carbon group Toho Tenax supplies carbon fiber material for major primary and secondarycomposite structures on the aircraft program.

Toho Tenax supplies a variety of carbon fiber types for both dry textile and prepreg use on the program. Toho Tenax expects the award to generate revenues of approximately $130 million over the next ten years. Bombardier Aerospace chose Toho Tenax's advanced carbon fiber materials to support this aircraft program since the latest Tenax carbon fiber materials meet the aircraft's advanced design requirements and support Bombardier's newly developed manufacturing processes, says Teijin.

Not simply providing the technology for this project, Virtek’s applications experts collaborated closely with Bombardier along the way to help find ways of overcoming the challenges involved in making these very critical and complex components.

Bombardier’s Belfast facility is responsible for the development, manufacture and assembly of the wings for the aircraft. To date, Virtek has supplied LaserEdge projection systems to Bombardier manufacturing sites in Europe, Canada and Mexico.

The extensive use of advanced structural materials in the manufacture of the CSeries aircraft results in significant weight savings and contributes to the 20 percent fuel burn advantage target over in-production aircraft in its class.